One of our speech language pathologists, Lauren Walence, shares ways to have fun with your child on St. Patrick’s day while incorporating new vocabulary and building language skills. Read below:

A great way to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day is to have a little bit o’ fun with your kids! Using sabotage can be a valuable strategy when expanding your child’s expressive language skills. What is sabotage? Sabotage is a way to stop anticipating your child’s needs, play dumb, and give your child time to think about how they are going to communicate what is happening in their world. Allowing a mischievous leprechaun to leave a few surprises while your child sleeps will provide them with rich language opportunities when they wake up and talk about everything the leprechaun switched around. Here are some easy, festive ideas:

• Green milk for their cereal
• Use a doll’s shoe to make leprechaun footprints across the counter
• Sneaky temporary shamrock tattoos
• Hide gold coins and talk about where they were found
• Move furniture from its ordinary spot or turn it upside down!
• Hang rainbow streamers in your child’s doorway
• Swap a Cheerios bag with Lucky Charms cereal

Once you’ve found all the leprechaun’s tricks, take the time to make leprechaun pancakes, see recipe here: https://www.craftymorning.com/st-patricks-day-lucky-pancakes/  Cooking together is a great way to input new vocabulary, build language skills and bond with your little one. Don’t forget to read a St. Patrick’s Day book before these festivities to give your child context as to what a leprechaun is and what mischief they get into!